Horn's ability

James Wynn · 27 Oct 2011, 15:25 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:25:22 -0500
Subject: (urth) Horn's ability
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W439967C54EA9F388144EDECFD20 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W439967C54EA9F388144EDECFD20 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4EA977E2.1010207 at gmail.com>

>> David Stockhoff: Lee, do you have a link for your demonic magistrate finding? Most of
>> what I find is about OUR Hethor!
> Lee Berman wrote:
> It is from this old text- An Encyclopaedia of Occultism. It is the first entry on this
> search page and the Google blurb is the quickest way to read the relevent content:
> http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=hethor+astra&pbx=1&oq=hethor+astra&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1027l4808l0l5041l14l11l1l0l0l0l280l2241l0.5.6l12l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=d566e0fbd09c8604&biw=1280&bih=872
>
> If you click on the link to the Encyclopaedia, you'll get some yellow highlighted parts of
> the essentially illegible text on page 270 of the book. But if you then click on "Plain Text"
> in the upper right hand corner and go to page 270 you can read the full paragraph about the
> Astra named Hethor. Not a lot really.

Here's the deal. The five books of Severian, and the four books of Silk 
(and perhaps the Book of the Short Sun although Wolfe veers into very 
Orthodox territory there, I think) are so ingrained with Gnosticism that 
it would be difficult to refute the assertion that these books are to 
Gnosticism what the Chronicles of Narnia are to Protestant orthodoxy. 
I'm not saying I'm comfortable with that argument, but it would be very  
difficult to refute it.

Admittedly, it's possible to make too much of it. Wolfe has said that 
Briah, Yesod, and the names of the other universes freely ripped from 
the Gnostic lexicon without too much care for theological precision. 
However, I think it is a mistake to assume that the saint names were 
chose haphazardly for the characters. Given the deep level of Gnostic 
detail carved into these books, it is extremely likely that the saint 
name Hethor was settled on precisely BECAUSE it was also the name of a 
Gnostic angel (an Astra, ie. "star", that is a "fallen star", that is a 
"fallen angel" ). And it would be very like Wolfe to craft a character 
that refers to both of those etymologies...as well as others such as 
"Hector" or the English primrose variety known as the "Hethor Giant".

The word "inhuma" references a species of bird, Dionysus, vampires, and 
monstrosity--and all that is worked into the narrative. Wolfe is just 
very, very clever. And he invites us to be very clever too.

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